1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to automatic authoring and marketing, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for authoring, marketing, and/or distributing title materials automatically by a computer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The commercial publishing and media industries traditionally comprise a number of discrete entities which ultimately make title materials available to an end-user. This disintegrated process involves a number of phases which, by their nature, incur substantial labor, material and organizational costs.
Manually authoring a work, such as non-fiction and fiction works, often requires months, or even years of costly labor. Further, many manually authored materials are prone to errors, especially in cases where the work involves a large number of numerical values which may be based on a plurality of calculations, includes extensive tabular information, or includes a large number of graphic illustrations. Given the need to recover the costs of high labor inputs, manually authored works are often economically viable only when there exists a sufficiently large number of buyers to recover the costs of development and marketing of the work. Given the complexities of some subjects, the publication of some materials are not economically viable. Such subjects include, for example, materials that involve a large number of numerical entries or calculations, the reporting of a large number of calculations in tabular or other formats, or graphical or audio representations embedded within materials. Traditionally, the larger the number of such complexities, the higher the cost of developing materials.
Additionally, the publication or production process of materials is often undertaken by a separate entity, thereby increasing the total labor costs associated with providing the materials to an end-user. The publishing and production processes for material traditionally involves packaging, formatting, promotion, distribution and the like. This process also traditionally involves substantial labor inputs and is prone to human error.
Once a work is authored, the work encounters laborious editing and formatting. These processes often include general editing, spell checking, grammar checking, sentence re-writing, graphics editing, text formatting, video editing, dubbing, audio editing, changing layout designs, and the like. The existence of tables and graphics in the title material further slow this process. In addition to being prone to human error, the typesetting/developing, editing and formatting processes take several months time.
After the work is polished, edited or formatted in an appropriate manner, the publishing and media industries use separate entities or persons to handle the marketing or promotion and the distribution of the work. This separation of tasks incurs additional costs based on persons who are neither the authors nor the editors of the work. Once the work is authored and edited, it is marketed using various means, including press releases, cataloging in various databases (using meta files), direct mail brochures, email announcements, video releases, audio releases, banners, billboards, and Internet web pages, among others. Many months of labor is traditionally used in the preparation and the distribution of these marketing and promotional materials. Additionally, human marketers must find the appropriate audience to send press releases, brochures, or similar marketing materials. In addition to creating the marketing materials, the human marketer spends time researching the appropriate target market of individuals who should receive the marketing materials.
Further, when such works are ordered or requested, it is traditionally fulfilled using an inventory of existing stock that has been pre-printed or produced in either electronic or non-electronic format. Therefore, if a new edition is required, many of the costs associated with the first edition of the material are again incurred. Furthermore, if a recipient, such as a distributor or an end-user, requests a specific form of the material, or a customized version of the material that might omit or augment the content, this customization takes many months time and added costs.
If a version of the title material is desired in a language other than that of the original material, the author or publisher will send the material to language translators who may require many months time to completely translate the material. If a version of the title material is physically or electronically incompatible with a given seller's method of distribution, the material is often reformatted at high costs in labor and/or materials. If a series of a version of the title material is desired across pre-defined units such as time, geographical area, corporate entity, genre, or methodology, substantial costs are traditionally incurred for each member of the series, or plurality of series making up the body of the materials.
At least one recent source has opined that it would not be until year 2017 that a computer “creates original text documents.” The Macmillan Atlas of the Future 36 (Ian Pearson ed., Macmillan Books 1998). Additionally, a recent article noted that “[w]hat we now call ‘hard copy’ has continued essentially unchanged since Guttenberg. Letters are still written, books bound, newspapers—mostly—printed and distributed much as they ever were.” Talking to the World, The Economist, Dec. 31, 1999, at 83-85. Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus for authoring, marketing, and/or distributing title materials automatically by a computer. Further, there is a need for an automated system that eliminates or substantially reduces the costs associated with human labor, such as authors, editors, graphic artists, data analysts, translators, distributors, and marketing personnel. Moreover, there is a need for an automated system that allows title materials to be quickly authored, marketed, and/or distributed as the latest possible edition of the material and in the format and written language of the end-user's choice.